What if the quickest way to calm your nervous system didn’t involve meditation, mindset work, or even deep breathing, but just a pen and a few minutes?

In this episode of the Building Resilience Podcast, Leah Davidson shares three simple, science-backed tools to help you gently regulate your nervous system, using creative expression, not perfection. These practices don’t require artistic skill or profound insights. Just a willingness to explore, express, and create a sense of safety in your body.

You’ll learn how doodling, gentle journaling prompts, and repetitive shapes can act as regulation anchors helping you shift out of survival mode and into a state of calm, clarity, and connection.

Whether you’re overwhelmed, shut down, overstimulated, or just looking for a way to reconnect with yourself this episode will give you three powerful ways to feel a little more regulated in under 10 minutes.

✨ Want to go deeper? These are the exact kinds of practices we use weekly inside the Nervous System Journaling Club, a creative, supportive space to build safety and resilience from the inside out.

We’ll explore:

• Visual expression helps externalise internal states.
• Simple journaling prompts can shift your state.
• Repetitive patterns (like loops or spirals) create predictability.
• Containment matters more than perfection.
• Co-regulation can happen with the page.
• Every time you meet your system with curiosity, you build resilience.

📝 Get My Resilience Journal

A guided journal for emotional well-being and nervous system care

📌 Amazon US:

https://www.amazon.com/Mental-Journal...

📌 Amazon CA: Buy Here:

https://www.amazon.ca/Mental-Journal-...

🎓 Join the Nervous System Journaling Club

Doodle, journal, and heal in community:

https://www.skool.com/nervous-system-...

Let’s Stay Connected:

Instagram & Facebook: @leahdavidsonlifecoaching

Subscribe to the Weekly Newsletter: leahdavidsonlifecoaching.com/newsletter

Enjoyed the episode?

Please leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast platform. It helps more people discover these tools for healing and resilience.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Do you ever feel like you're doing all the inner work, journaling, processing, consuming wisdom, but still not feeling purposeful or alive?

In this episode of the Building Resilience Podcast, we explore a powerful reframe: healing alone isn’t the goal. Living is. Using the metaphors of weeding vs planting and consuming vs creating, we’ll unpack how real purpose isn’t something you chase, it’s something you experience, through small acts of creation and participation.

We’ll talk about why so many people get stuck in chronic weeding mode, what happens when we only consume but never create, and how even the tiniest moments of planting can signal safety to your nervous system.

This episode is your reminder that healing doesn’t have to be a full-time job, and that joy, meaning, and purpose come from doing, not just fixing.

Timestamps

00:00 – That “What’s the point of all this?” feeling

01:00 – Purpose as pressure: why it dysregulates the nervous system

02:15 – The weeding vs planting metaphor

04:55 – Healing = weeding, but what about planting?

06:20 – How your nervous system interprets creation as safety

07:00 – Consuming vs creating: input ≠ output

08:10 – You don’t regulate from what you know, you regulate from what you do

09:10 – Chronic weeding and chronic consuming = dysregulation

10:00 – Regulation through participation, not perfection

10:40 – Let purpose reveal itself through small acts

11:20 – Journaling prompts and where to start

📝 Get My Resilience Journal

A guided journal for emotional well-being and nervous system care

📌 Amazon US:

https://www.amazon.com/Mental-Journal...

📌 Amazon CA: Buy Here:

https://www.amazon.ca/Mental-Journal-...

🎓 Join the Nervous System Journaling Club

Doodle, journal, and heal in community:

https://www.skool.com/nervous-system-...

Let’s Stay Connected:

Instagram & Facebook: @leahdavidsonlifecoaching

Subscribe to the Weekly Newsletter: leahdavidsonlifecoaching.com/newsletter

Enjoyed the episode?

Please leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast platform. It helps more people discover these tools for healing and resilience.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What if the most resilient people aren’t the ones who bounce back quickly—but those who allow themselves to break, feel, grieve, and still move forward?

In this heartfelt episode, we explore tragic optimism—a powerful reframe introduced by Viktor Frankl—and how it allows us to hold both pain and hope without bypassing either. You’ll learn how real resilience comes not from fixing or rushing, but from the ability to live with the full truth of what is and keep going anyway.

We’ll explore:

• Why “bouncing back” is a cultural myth

• What tragic optimism really means (and what it’s not)

• The nervous system’s role in resilience and meaning-making

• The 3 Ps of pessimism—and how to unlearn them

• Practical tools to regulate your body, reframe your thoughts, and hold space for grief and growth at once

This is your invitation to stop striving to return to “how things used to be”—and instead, build capacity to bounce forward with wisdom, gentleness, and courage.

Timestamps:

00:00 – Resilient people aren’t the fastest to recover

06:55 – When Breath Becomes Air & the phrase “devastatingly beautiful”

10:14 – What tragic optimism really means (Viktor Frankl)

13:05 – Why it’s not toxic positivity (Brad Stulberg’s take)

15:15 – Introducing learned optimism (Martin Seligman)

17:32 – The 3 Ps of pessimism and how to flip them

20:18 – Why your nervous system must feel safe before optimism is possible

23:12 – You can’t access nuance from a dysregulated state

25:50 – The nervous system’s role in meaning-making

28:36 – Post-traumatic growth: Making meaning, not finding it

31:45 – What it means to hold both pain and hope

33:58 – How to actually practice tragic optimism

36:10 – Step 1: Reframe with “both/and” language

37:15 – Step 2: Befriend your nervous system, not fight it

38:48 – Step 3: Hold space for others with “Tell me more”

40:10 – What resilience really looks like: bouncing forward

41:50 – Why regulating isn’t about avoiding pain—it’s about holding it

43:30 – Final thoughts: You can be devastatingly beautiful too

📝 Get My Resilience Journal

A guided journal for emotional well-being and nervous system care

📌 Amazon US:

https://www.amazon.com/Mental-Journal-Anxiety-Management-Self-Care/dp/B0DNRSLV9F/ref=sr_1_1?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.aXvnLQ5iNMBUxzQYYcrgjg.AteqhnbvcWMthzgND7lwUxHbtn59LfW9Y7jqFUK9X-M&dib_tag=se&keywords=Mental%2Bhealth%2BJournal&qid=1751362532&sr=8-1&th=1

📌 Amazon CA: Buy Here:

https://www.amazon.ca/Mental-Journal-Anxiety-Management-Self-Care/dp/B0DNRSLV9F?th=1

🎓 Join the Nervous System Journaling Club

Doodle, journal, and heal in community:

https://www.skool.com/nervous-system-journaling-club/about?ref=06e003b61b8148ebbafd3a067f3cc2e1

Let’s Stay Connected:

Instagram & Facebook: @leahdavidsonlifecoaching

Subscribe to the Weekly Newsletter: leahdavidsonlifecoaching.com/newsletter

Enjoyed the episode?

Please leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast platform. It helps more people discover these tools for healing and resilience.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.